Archived News from 2016  (12/29/2016)

Roger Waters: Another Brick In The Wall - The Opera; dates added

Another Brick In The Wall - The Opera receives its world premiere at the Salle

Wilfrid-Pelletier at Place des Arts, in Montréal, Quebec, Canada on March 11th

2017, with subsequent performances taking place through the month.

Due to the popularity of the show, some additional performances have now been

announced, and tickets can be purchased through Ticketmaster.com. For more

information on Another Brick In The Wall - The Opera and other events, visit OperaDeMontreal.com.

The press conference for the series of performances was held at the Olympic

Stadium, the scene of the infamous spitting incident which inspired The Wall. "It was

unpleasant," said Waters. "I accept that. I was unpleasant. The audience was

unpleasant. But it clearly had an effect on me and the story I tell is that it had some

impact on me creating this piece of theatre, which is extremely valuable to me.

"I was pissed off or disaffected because of a large number of people who, with all due

respect to the population of Montreal, were drunk and not really paying much attention to what was going on on stage and some kid was scrambling up the front [of the stage] and I think that I spat at him. I

realised I was at the wrong place at the wrong time doing the wrong thing. And I

needed to express that I didn’t feel human and we all want to feel human. My response

to that was to write a show that involved building a huge wall between me and the people that I was trying to communicate

with.“At the end of the day, The Wall is about a

journey from spitting in someone’s face towards a position where love becomes

more important and our responsibility to those that share this planet with us

becomes more important than our desire to engage in things that make us richer.”

At the press conference, Waters noted that “What I’ve heard so far is extremely

impressive. Normally when people take rock music and produce symphonic versions

of it, they stick slavishly to the melodies, and it’s awful. Julien Bilodeau has nodded gracefully at the work that I did musically

all those years ago, but he has transported it into a completely different oeuvre. It’s developing a life of its own, which is in a

classical tradition, but the libretto is mine. The words are mine. So the thoughts and

ideas expressed in the text belong to me.”

As we note above, tickets for the performances, which take place on March 11th, 13th, 14th, 16th, 18th, 20th, 22nd, 24th and 26th, 2017, can be purchased

through Ticketmaster.com or directly from the venue (Salle Wilfrid-Pelletier).

(12/29/2016)*Pink Floyd needed conflict

Nick Mason insists Pink Floyd were no more difficult that other bands but thinks their

differences only helped their musicNick Mason thinks Pink Floyd wouldn't have done "good work" without their "conflicts".

The 'Comfortably Numb' hitmaker doesn't feel that the band's ex-bass player and

founder Roger Waters' ego was to blame for their disagreements and that it was simply

a case of having different "musical preferences".

However, he insists the infamous tension between the band members wasn't

necessarily a bad thing as it helped with their music.

Asked if he thinks egos had anything to do with their spats, the 72-year-old drummer

exclusively told BANG Showbiz: "I don't think it's that. I think it was to do with

musical preferences."He did want to do things his own way, so

maybe that was the best thing to do was to do his own way.

"I think we have our reputations, but most of the bands you see aren't much better

than we are."The other important thing is that if we

didn't have the conflicts we had then we wouldn't have done the good work we did

do."Meanwhile, Nick previously said he doesn't think he will reunite with Roger and the rest

of the band - which also includes David Gilmour - unless it was for a good cause.

Asked if he thinks the group will tour again, he said: "I would say absolutely not. But

having said that I certainly don't think there will be another Pink Floyd tour.

__________________________________________________________________

(11/26/2016)* 11/21/ Posted

Pink Floyd reunion: Nick Mason reveals if Roger Waters, David Gilmour will rejoin

The last time the awesome foursome of the band performed together was in the Live 8

concert in 2005.When was the last time you saw Pink Floyd coming together for a massive gig? Hard to

recall, but the Pulse concert at the Earls Court, London, on 20 October 1994,

remained a mega event. Of course, Roger Waters wasn't there but still. David Gilmour, Nick Mason and Richard Wright were there

and they did absolute create magic. Is a repeat of what happened over two

decades back, possible now? No, not at all. Unless we get the power to resurrect

Wright, the famed keyboardist of the band. Also, until we also have the power to

convince Waters to come for a one-off concert and emulate the magic the

awesome foursome did during the Wall Tour in the early 1980's.

Nick Mason, the drummer of the band, remains the most active member of the band at the moment, as compared to

Gilmour or Waters. While Waters does a plethora of concerts around the world still, he doesn't really mention anything about Pink Floyd. Gilmour, too, is keen on more

personal space at the moment.

We did report that Pink Floyd could reunite for a one-off concert, probably in support of

Palestine, but is that really on the cards? Mason, speaking to Rolling Stone magazine

exclusively, didn't rule that out actually.

I always liked playing [with the band]. Maybe next year I would look to do a bit more. I absolutely love us [Pink Floyd]

playing things properly. It's not that I have

a desperate need to get out in front of any old audience playing any old thing. But I

also think it's almost impossible because if we're going to do anything, one would want

to do it properly," spoke Mason.It's great maybe to do one thing for Live 8, but running a full-on Pink Floyd production,

everyone would need to have a real enthusiasm for it. I cannot imagine

dragging Roger and David around doing it unless they underwent some extraordinary

change," the 72-year-old added.Mason also commented at the friendship

among them has shamefully gone the wrong way, over the years.

It's just sometimes it's a shame. There's a friendship element to the whole thing, and

it's great when Roger and I had a rapprochement after not speaking for about seven years. It means a lot to me actually,

that particular friendship," continued Mason.

I met Roger long before the band, so I've known him for well over 50 years and it's a shame in a way. It's not even that I need to get together and go back on the road. It's just unnecessary sometimes to think that

they can still irritate each other.

I think David is very happy doing the very restricted touring he's done. The funny

thing is he always starts on one level and then ends up adding more lights or more

film or whatever. He worked really hard the years we did without Roger, the really big

tours. And he carried that on his shoulders. It was a hell of a lot easier for me than him. He was in front of it all. But I really respect what he did. I think he really just doesn't

want to go back there. I respect that," Mason spoke.

The last time David Gilmour, Nick Mason, Roger Was and Richard Wright performed live was at the Live 8 Concert in London in

2005. FULL CONCERT BELOW:

__________________________________________________________________________

(11/26/2016)*35 Years Ago: Pink Floyd’s ‘A Collection of

Great Dance Songs’ Sums Up the ’70s11/23/2016 date of News 

Pink Floyd’s record labels in the U.K. and U.S. had gotten used to a schedule. 

Since 1973’s The Dark Side of the Moon, the progressive rockers had released a new studio album every two years. Albums such as Wish You Were Here, Animals and The Wall  became big hits, scaling the charts

and selling millions of copies.

But in 1981 – two years after The Wall – there was no sign of a new Floyd album. The band’s time had been dominated by

ancillary Wall projects, including a spate of ambitious live performances in 1980-81 and

a film version of the double LP, in

which Roger Waters was heavily involved. In addition, the relationships between Pink

Floyd’s members were fracturing. 

Keyboardist and founding member Rick Wright had been booted from the band,

while Waters’s work on The Wall movie was putting distance between him and guitarist

and singer David Gilmour.

With nothing new from the band on the horizon, its U.S. label decided to forge a

stop-gap release. Columbia Records sought to assemble a “best-of” compilation to

come out for the holiday shopping season in 1981. As prog rock wasn’t known for hit singles (you could count the number of

Floyd’s U.S. hits on one hand), a different approach was warranted, and so the label

persuaded Gilmour to curate the collection.

With Columbia demanding a single LP, space was at a premium for the expansive sounds of Pink Floyd. Still, Gilmour hastily

managed a six-track compilation that included four album cuts alongside the

band’s only ’70s hits – “Another Brick in the Wall (Part II)” and “Money.” But it wouldn’t

be that simple.

Some of the songs would need to be edited to fit on one slab of vinyl. The nine parts of “Shine on You Crazy Diamond” had taken up the majority of Wish You Were Here, so

the tune was cut down to less than 11 minutes this time (forcing the recording to resemble the original 1974 live version).

“Brick” was given the single edition’s intro, but the closing of the album cut, while

“Wish You Were Here” received some light trimming. “Sheep” might have been picked simply because it was the shortest of the

three major songs on Animals. Opener “One of These Days” was left alone.

It wasn’t perfect, but the album worked well enough. Still, Gilmour couldn’t walk away quite yet. Columbia received notice that

Capitol Records (the previous U.S. home of Pink Floyd), refused to license the version of

“Money” that had appeared on Dark Side … or at least not for a free that Columbia was willing to spend. Missing one of the

band’s best-known songs wasn’t an option, and it fell to Gilmour to record a new

version of “Money.”

With producer James Guthrie behind the boards, the Pink Floyd guitarist recut almost

all of the instruments himself, trying to mimic the 1973 tune. As on the original, Gilmour sang and played guitar, but this

time he also drummed and played keyboards and bass. Dick Parry obliged to

come into New Roydonia Studios and rerecord his saxophone part. Only the cash

register sound loops remained from

the Dark Side recording. Even though Gilmour did his best to keep all sounds as

similar as possible, the differences are evident in the guitar and sax solos, as well

as the running time (the newer version runs 15 seconds longer).

The now-complete compilation was given the ironic title of A Collection of Great

Dance Songs, a sly reference to the disco rhythms of “Another Brick in the Wall” and/or drummer Nick Mason’s joke that Floyd’s U.S. label probably thought they

were a dance band. The album’s art (created by Hipgnosis, under a pseudonym)

reflected the gag, depicting a pair of dancers held in place. 

A quote from Gilmour about the album cover gives you an indication of what he

thought about the entire project: “It was so awful, I thought I’d get it cheap.”

A Collection of Great Dance Songs was released on Nov. 23, 1981, in the U.S. (it was also issued in the U.K. by Harvest).

While the compilation became Pink Floyd’s worst-charting LP in the States since 1972 – and its worst-to-date overseas – the album

has gone multi-platinum over the years. The release has largely been supplanted by Pink Floyd collections released in the digital

era.

In an ironic twist, the album that was designed as a basic introduction to Pink

Floyd has become a must-have for hardcore Floyd completists. A Collection of Great

Dance Songs remains the only release that contains the unique edit of “Shine on You Crazy Diamond” as well as Gilmour’s solo

studio version of “Money.”____________________________________________

___________________________(11/19/2016)*

Pink Floyd’s Meddle remasters secretly released as part of The Early

Years compilation

Stereo and 5.1 mixes have been hidden away on one of the compilation's Blu-ray

discsWhen the expansive Pink

Floyd compilation The Early Years 1965-1972 was released last week, fans were

treated to 11 CDs, eight Blu-rays, nine DVDs, five 7-inch singles, all featuring over 10 hours of audio and video that had never seen an official release. At a $550 price tag, it’s a worthy treasure trove of material, but even still, something was

missing.

When the set was first announced, it was said to feature new stereo and 5.1 mixes of

1972’s Obscured by Clouds and the landmark 1971 album, Meddle. However, something changed and they were both

replaced by a stereo soundtrack to the concert film Live at Pompeii. But this is Pink

Floyd we’re talking about, and nothing is quite what it seems. Both mixes

of Meddle are actually still part of the box set — they’re just hidden!

Careful with that axe, Eugene — don’t go tearing up the packaging looking for a secret disc. In this case, the album is

hidden inside the set’s Blu-ray discs. It’s no mere Easter egg, either; you’ll need to employ specialized software to pull the

mixes from the disc. This discovery comes thanks to enterprising audiophiles who,

while ripping the files from the REVERBER/ATION Blu-ray, came away

with much more than Atom Heart Mother bonus content.

Hypothetically, with a record as significant as Meddle, these mixes are destined for a

stand-alone release some day. (Perhaps the

still unreleased Obscured by Clouds mixes too.) Rumors of why they weren’t officially

included abound, including some well-informed nods that it might have been due

to a lack of approval from the band members — a rumor given some clout by

Vernon Fitch of Pink Floyd Archives.

Whether intentional or an accident, these mixes of Meddle are out in the wild now and

can be yours if you’ve got the finances to pick up this limited edition box set before it’s gone and the knowhow to extract the

files.____________________________________________

______________________(11/19/2016)*

Pink Floyd's Nick Mason on 'Early Years,' Syd Barrett, Inter-Band Tension

Drummer reflects on group's path to 'Dark Side of the Moon,' chronicled in exhaustive

new box set

Pink Floyd's journey to prog-rock masterpiece Dark Side of the

Moon was long and varied, and it's one of the most fascinating stories in rock, with

stops in blues jamming, otherworldly psychedelia and trippy folk music. It's

documented exhaustively in the recently released box set, The Early Years: 1965 –

1972, but the band's drummer, Nick Mason, remembers their origins as being even

humbler than the early recordings in the box let on.

Pink Floyd's journey to prog-rock masterpiece Dark Side of the Moon was long and varied, and it's one of the most fascinating stories in rock, with stops in

blues jamming, otherworldly psychedelia and trippy folk music. It's documented

exhaustively in the recently released box set, The Early Years: 1965 – 1972, but the band's drummer, Nick Mason, remembers

their origins as being even humbler than the early recordings in the box let on.

"From '65 to the beginning of '67, we were a really amateur band," the dapper, soft-

spoken drummer says, reclining in a velvet couch in a tucked-away corner of a SoHo hotel. "It's funny because if I could add up

the hours of actual drum playing I did between birth and 1966, it'd be, I don't know, 100, 150 hours. I didn't practice. I

didn't study. I just had a drum kit and played with my friends for fun. A year later,

I'd probably put in 700 hours."

Thinking back on it makes him laugh, and he leans forward. "By then we'd done 200 gigs and been in the studio for hours," he continues. "It was a very rapid sea change from amateur drummer to making a living.

It's a curious one."

The box set, modeled visually after the band's early-period van, contains 27 discs,

spanning CDs, DVDs and Blu-ray, containing around seven hours of previously

unreleased audio and more than seven hours of never-before-seen footage. It

begins with the group's first-ever sessions, a Stones-y jaunt from 1965, then it

traverses Syd Barrett's psychedelia, their soundtrack improvisations, festival space-

outs, ballet dalliances, ambitious orchestral suites and their avant-garde Pompeii film.

In the space of seven years, they lived several lifetimes.

When Mason reflects on the group's origins, he speaks carefully and measuredly, while

sipping a cappuccino, often making dry jokes that he caps with a chuckle. What's most evident during his in-depth interview about The Early Years with Rolling Stone is

the deference he has for his former bandmates now and the pride and

amazement he has about the work the

band put into their career on the way to "The Great Gig in the Sky."

One of the box set's major standouts is your first recording session from 1965. What do

you remember about it?Nearly anyone in music will always

remember their first recording session in a proper studio. It was a bit nerve-racking

going into the control room, and hearing my drums and the bass and the rest of it coming through monitors at whatever decibels, but it's fantastic. I remember

thinking, "That's me."

What struck me was how you can use the recording studio to turn that raw material into something that sounds like a record. I remember that from those sessions, but

also "Arnold Layne," same thing. We went and played it, but by the time Joe Boyd

finished mixing and fixing and added that

repeat echo on the hi-hat, you go, "Oh, that's clever." You're blown away by it.

What stands out to you now about the band's first gig, in February 1965?

The word "concert" may be over-egging the plate. It was a cellar somewhere in south Kensington, and I remember it quite well because we had a residency there. It was really the only paid gig we'd ever done,

probably for almost nothing. We did three or four shows there, and then they had a noise injunction served on them. We were

so desperate for the money; we did an unplugged thing for a couple of weeks. But I

do remember it quite well because it was just the very beginning of realizing we had a small audience, but an audience. It was

probably our first real gig that wasn't someone else's birthday party.

The box set's packaging is stylized after the band's first Bedford van. How long did you

have that original vehicle?Oh, about a year. It was terrible. It was

really cheap, only $30. I remember it well because we spent a lot of time trying to get

it to go. But it was an absolute necessity. There was no other way of moving your kit around, even though we were only playing around London. We had to have this thing.

The band sounds almost like the Rolling Stones on those '65 sessions. But by the

time you put out the first album, you sounded completely different. Why is that?

By the time we did Piper, we were covering two or three different things. Because there

was the whole Syd writing thing of "Scarecrow," "The Gnome," "Bike" – it's like

English pastoral, whimsical music, I suppose. But at the same time, Syd was also leading on things like "Interstellar

Overdrive" or "Astronomy Domine," which were quite heavyweight, sort of heavy-

metal thrash with a little bit of avant-garde thrown in. I think Syd was enormously creative because both of those aspects

came from him. It wasn't like we did anything uptempo and Syd wrote the

charming songs; he covered quite a lot of ground, really. 

How would Syd present a song like "Astronomy Domine" to the band?

I suspect he'd just strum it out. I don't remember exactly but what I do remember

from most of Pink Floyd is no one really ever suggested how anyone else should

play their parts. We all played it as we saw fit, until Bob Ezrin came in for The Wall. It's

sort of interesting, looking back.

Another one of the interesting things in the box set is a British newsreel showing the band playing "Interstellar Overdrive," and there's this very proper reporter talking

about the psychedelic experience. What did

you make of that kind of attention at the time?

I think we felt mixed, because we were riding on a bandwagon to some extent. I

certainly had never done an acid trip at that time. But we recognized it was to our

advantage to be seen as the house band of the psychedelic revolution. Syd was

possibly more involved with the scene, and there were elements that we bonded with.

I think there was an intellectual level to it. There was a love of poetry. There was a

connection to the Beat poets from the early Fifties, the Kerouac thing that was going on because a lot of people who were involved in setting up UFO, the club, were attached to that. And early on, we were suddenly becoming the commercial arm of it. We

weren't going to poetry readings, because we were touring or in Abbey Road recording

our first album, but we were in a curious part of that particular movement.

What do you make of Syd when you think back on him now?

My view is rather different now than when I talked about over the last 40 years. I

remember Roger saying to me he'd talk to Ronnie Laing, who was the great

psychiatrist of the period, and Roger said, "Syd's going mad." And apparently, Laing said to Roger, "Are you sure it's Syd who's

going mad?"

Looking back on it, there's no doubt that LSD exacerbated the state, but I think

perhaps what was happening was Syd had realized he didn't want to be in a rock band

at all. He'd done that, decided it wasn't really what he wanted to do and probably wanted to go back to art school, but he couldn't find a way of getting out of it.

Certainly, we couldn't believe that anyone didn't want to be in a rock band. So I think when he was messing around with

the songs, like [Saucerful of Secrets'] "Jugband Blues," I think he almost did it as

a whim, thinking it would be another really peculiar thing, whereas actually I think the

song has an extraordinary edge. I think what was going on was Syd really was

trying to leave.

There are stories that at your last few concerts, he was basically playing nothing.Like he's not there. There's a clip from the

Dick Clark show, where someone said to me it's so obvious he isn't there. He's there in

the physical sense, but not.

You filmed that American Bandstand clip a few days into your first-ever U.S. tour. How

did that go?It was chaotic. We were late because we had a huge trouble getting the visas. We were at least a day late for Winterland,

where we opened. We were on the bill with H.P. Lovecraft and Big Brother and the

Holding Company, and because we couldn't make that first show, Bill Graham brought

in Richie Havens and then let him on. So we did shows with four bands the next two nights. Meeting Janis [Joplin] was a real

treat in itself.

What was Janis like?She was so great at playing Janis. I know it eventually transpired that she wasn't really a happy person, but at the time, she was

the Southern Comfort–swilling babe. Roger offered her a swig of a bottle of Southern

Comfort he was carrying and she took a hell of a lot more than a swig [laughs].What struck you about the States?

We had no idea what to expect. The little we knew about what was going on here was

because of English radio. But apart from pirate stations, the BBC played British

versions of everything. So we had heard of these [American] bands, so as far as we

were concerned, we expected them to be psychedelic or avant-garde. And then you'd

find that Country Joe and the Fish were a

country band. And Janis was R&B more or less. And the 1910 Fruitgum Company were a boy band. We had no idea what to expect

and the scale of the whole thing was monumental.

How did Syd take to America?Rather badly. Syd was losing interest in the

whole thing and we were carrying him around. It was pretty painful. The mad thing

is instead of really addressing it, we said, "What we ought to do is give Syd two days off." We flew back to Europe, gave him two

days off and went off to a festival in Holland. It was not the right way of doing

things.

Well, there's the famous story that you were all in the bus and Roger asked if the

band should pick him up and the consensus was to keep driving.

Yeah. We did four or five shows as a five-piece. The interesting thing is I still

remember exactly how relieved we were when we didn't pick him up. And it's interesting because he was the main

songwriter. He was the front man. And yet we seemed to feel comfortable without him.

I look back and I think, "How does that work?" But that's how it was.

Could you see the confidence building in Roger as a songwriter?

He wrote "Doctor, Doctor" ["Take Up Thy Stethoscope and Walk"] on Piper, and I

thought it was a really average song. And then, yes, suddenly it clicked in. Rick was writing, but he'd been responsible for a

couple of failed singles; there was nothing wrong with the songs but they'd been very Norman Smith–treated with harmony and backing vocals on them. They certainly

weren't the direction we felt comfortable going in. And so I think Roger seized the bit and got on with it. He knocked out "Set the Controls for the Heart of the Sun," which,

for me, 50-odd years later, is still one of my

favorite Pink Floyd songs. It's still a great song to play.

In the five years after you parted ways with Syd, you began playing in many different styles before arriving at Dark Side of the Moon and your Seventies sound. Why do

you think that was?There was always an insatiable appetite for new material. Through all of '69, what we

were trying to do was build a repertoire that didn't include Syd's stuff, so we weren't

reliant on it. What's interesting is how much work we managed to get through in that

period, because both Barbet Schroeder film soundtracks [More and Obscured by Clouds] were albums in their own right. And one of them [Obscured] was done more or less at the same time as Dark Side. So you look back at it and think, "Not only did we put

out all this work, but we were also touring." I think we had a real appetite for getting on

with things.The box set chronicles many of your big

ideas: your presentations of The

Man and The Journey, the ballet collaboration, the "Atom Heart Mother" suite. Why were you attracted to such

grand, sweeping ideas then?

I think we just wanted to have a go at different things. I think the orchestral "Atom Heart Mother" stuff was ambitious in a way, but it was Ron Geesin who handled most of that. And the ballet, it didn't feel ambitious.

It felt like an interesting thing to do.

There was no new material for the ballet, but it had to be played in a particular way.

The tempo needed to be kept under control, which is not something we're always good

at. When you've got dancers, the song needs to end where it has to end. It's no good dribbling on for 16 bars too long,

leaving someone on their toes.

After Syd's departure, when do you feel the band found its footing?

Funnily enough, quite quickly.After Saucerful  had come out, we dribbled on a little bit with singles, but the first tour without Syd, when we played the Scene in New York, I think we realized then and feel

we had found our own audience for this particular band.

Its interesting going through the box set and listening to the many ways you

workshopped the Meddle track "Echoes." There's "Embryo," which has some of Rick Wright's keys later used in "Echoes," and then the instrumental "Nothing Part 14."

How did you work it out?

Playing live and improvising was one of the great ways of getting where you wanted to

go. I look back on the Grateful Dead and think they absolutely got it right when they

stopped worrying about bootlegging and

just said, "Everyone can bootleg." It took the value out of any one person's bootleg.

But we became so paranoid, as did everyone about bootlegging, that we wouldn't play anything live we hadn't

released. It's a real shame because it's such a great way of honing it. You develop it on

the road.I really like "Echoes." That was the

continuation of developing long pieces of music. Looking back, it's a little overlong.

We repeat ourselves in it because we knew that's how classical music worked.

Overtures reprise themes.

What classical music did you all like?Berlioz was a big favorite for a while. But there was so much music around at the

time. We listened to a little bit of classical music, but the main diet was all the things that were going on, particularly when we were touring and had access to American

music.

"Echoes" was the main piece in your Live at Pompeii film, which was remastered in 5.1 sound in the box set. What do you think

about when you look back on that experience?

It felt like a live show because of the venue itself, and the wind and the heat and the

rest of it, so it was a bit gritty. It made us all perform. The fact that there was no

audience worked because it allowed us to shoot it properly, and we could shoot in

daylight. I think there's a real problem with rock & roll shows where they nearly all look the same once you've got some stage light

going.Another standout from that film

is Meddle's "One of These Days." How did you come to voice the song's one lyric:

"One of these days I'm going to cut you into little pieces"?

We'd decided that it would be the intro into

the drum intro of the next section. I suspect Roger had come up with it. We possibly

tried a few voices and thought we wanted something a bit more weird, so I did this thing of speaking very high and fast and

then we slowed it down, and it worked. That was exactly the sort of thing we'd spend

some time in the studio doing, because we had unlimited studio time.

What other experiments do you look back on fondly?

We took mallets to a cymbal and dipped the cymbal into water. David messed around

with guitar sounds; one time he got one by plugging a wah-wah pedal back to front. We

spent quite a bit of time messing around with Leslie speakers and messing around with mic placements. And we spent lots of

time fiddling with the echo chamber. Abbey Road has its own actual echo chamber. It's not plate or a reverb; it's a real tiled room.

Speaking of guitar, there's great footage of you guys with Frank Zappa doing

"Interstellar Overdrive" in Belgium in 1969. How did that come about?

I'm really pleased we finally got our hands on that. It had been floating around for years. The guy who'd got it had been

treated pretty badly by everyone because no one would give him permission to use it.

The interesting thing is that none of can remember why we were at Amougies [in Belgium for a festival]? Why was he at

Amougies? The Mothers weren't playing, but I think he was somehow involved as the

curator. Roger knew him probably better than any of the rest of us, but we'd hung

out with him on our first and second tours. No one can remember who said, "Do you

want to jam?"

The interesting thing with Frank was that he's one of the very few rock & roll

intellectuals. I would put Frank Zappa, Roger and Pete Townshend together –

people who are a bit more thoughtful. Frank obviously had an extraordinary ability as a musician and composer. He could knock

out Joe's Garage or produce the G.T.O.'s. He had a very broad vision of rock music.

Since you say that Zappa clip was hard to get, what are you excited about in the box

set?A few things have fascinated me because they're a bit cringe-worthy, like the Dick

Clark show, pictures of us miming in Belgium promoting a single. There's a

whole series of improvised pieces that were done with John Latham [in 1967]. I have no memory at all of when we did them or how we did them or who John Latham was. I just

haven't got a clue.

Another random thing is you did music for the moon landing when it was broadcast on

the BBC.

That, sadly, is another one I can't remember. I don't think we played to the

actual landing. I don't think we had a screen set up. I think some bright spark at the BBC

thought, "I know, let's get the band in to improvise something as an accompaniment to the moon landing." I was saying earlier today, it wasn't the case of being able to

say, "That was lovely, Neil, darling. Just one more step."

The last Pink Floyd tour was more than 20 years ago. Do you miss it?

A bit. I always liked playing. Maybe next year I would look to do a bit more. I

absolutely love us playing things properly. It's not that I have a desperate need to get out in front of any old audience playing any

old thing. But I also think it's almost impossible because if we're going to do

anything, one would want to do it properly. It's great maybe to do one thing for Live 8, but running a full-on Pink Floyd production,

everyone would need to have a real enthusiasm for it. I cannot imagine

dragging Roger and David around doing it unless they underwent some extraordinary

change.

I imagine it's hard being friends with both of them.

It's not that it's hard, really; it's just sometimes it's a shame. There's a

friendship element to the whole thing, and it's great when Roger and I had a

rapprochement after not speaking for about seven years. It means a lot to me actually, that particular friendship. I met Roger long before the band, so I've known him for well over 50 years and it's a shame in a way. It's not even that I need to get together and go

back on the road. It's just unnecessary sometimes to think that they can still

irritate each other.

Sure. Moreover, David has been pretty adamant that the band is done and over.Yeah, I understand. I remember talking to

Peter Gabriel 10, 15 years ago. I asked him whether he was likely going to do

something with Genesis, and he said, "The trouble is, I've spent 25 years trying to shed the 'Genesis' thing and be Peter Gabriel. It

takes only one event before everyone goes, 'That was brilliant. Why don't you just all get back together?'" I think David is very

happy doing the very restricted touring he's done.

The funny thing is he always starts on one level and then ends up adding more lights or more film or whatever. He worked really hard the years we did without Roger, the really big tours. And he carried that on his shoulders. It was a hell of a lot easier for

me than him. He was in front of it all. But I really respect what he did. I think he really

just doesn't want to go back there. I respect that.

Did you see his recent tour?No, I was away actually. I would have loved to. It's very nice because Roger's out and

doing great, and David's out doing beautifully. So as long as they're still ahead

of the Australian Pink Floyd, that's good. The worrying thing is when someone went, "Oh, yeah, I saw the Australian Pink Floyd – or the Brit Floyd – they're so much better

than you guys." [Laughs]

What is your musical life like now?I don't play a lot, but a bit. I've worked on two albums this year with other people. I enjoy a little bit of production. I worked a little bit with really young artists, through

the Roundhouse, which is a local operation with a great venue. The guy who owns it

puts it into a charitable foundation. Underneath it is little studios and rehearsal rooms and any local kids can come in and borrow instruments and get some tutoring.

Actually, most of my time between now and the next six months will be the V&A

[exhibition], because there's so much to do. I'm going home tonight and have a meeting

tomorrow morning.

How is the Victoria and Albert exhibition coming together?

Great. They're such good people. Not only have they done Bowie and Alexander

McQueen, they've been putting on exhibitions for a hundred years. And we're working with Stufish Entertainment, which is Mark Fisher's production office, who did

most of our stage stuff. And we've got Patrick Woodroffe, the lighting designer,

involved. Then we've got Po from Hipgnosis. When they're working together, it's great. When they're not, it's just like being in the

band again [laughs].

What are you excited to display in the V&A?The most exciting things are the hands-on things. If you've been to the Rolling Stones'

exhibition, it seems like what everyone comes back with is the mixing desk where

you can fiddle about and actually mix songs. I think if we can do some more of that to show how things work, that's the

best of it.

The other thing about the Stones exhibit is how they recreated their dingy 1962

apartment.Well [claps], I lived in one of those. It was very much like that [laughs]. We might

borrow it from them.

Do you have any more archival musical releases planned, such an expanded

version of Animals?No, we've talked about it. I think what we'll do is get the V&A done and have a look at

what's there.

I ask because you've made them for some of the other albums, and this box set does a great job of setting everything up, the way the band would change musically into the

Seventies and on through the Nineties.The funny thing is it changes with the same

personnel. It's easy to understand why Fleetwood Mac might start as a full-on blues

band and then change enormously when Lindsey and the girls join. But in our case, it

was more like, "Let's try this. Let's do something else."

___________________________________________________________________________________

(10/23/2016)See Roger Waters, My Morning Jacket, Neil

Young Cover Bob Dylan TogetherRockers form impromptu supergroup to

perform "Forever Young" at Bridge School Benefit

Roger Waters and My Morning Jacket joined forces with Neil Young to cover Bob Dylan's

"Forever Young" at Bridge School.

Roger Waters reunited with My Morning Jacket, his backing band at the 2015

Newport Folk Festival, Saturday at the Bridge School Benefit. Like that June 2015 performance, Waters and MMJ finished off

their set with a cover of Bob Dylan's "Forever Young," only this time Neil

Young joined the collection of musicians onstage for the epic performance.

Young and Waters both recently performed, albeit on separate days, at the Desert Trip

weekends. In addition to the Pink Floyd bassist and Jim James and company,

formerSaturday Night Live bandleader G.E. Smith and singer Lucius sat in on the

Shoreline Amphitheatre gig.

Waters' seven-song set also featured three cuts off The Wall – "Mother," "Vera" and

"Bring the Boys Back Home" – plus Amused to Death's "The Bravery of Being Out of

Range," a cover of John Prince's "Hello in There" and Pink Floyd's classic "Wish You

Were Here."

Waters will be back onstage at the Mountain View, California venue for the second day of the annual Bridge School Benefit. The benefit concert's first night

also feature Metallica partnering with Neil Young to play "Mr. Soul."

___________________________________________________________________________________

(10/23/2016)*Syd-era Pink Floyd song featured in new

‘Doctor Strange’ movie; Posted on October 21, 2016

Pink Floyd and Marvel comic Doctor Strange have been intertwined ever since

the band hid some of Marie Severin illustrations from Strange Tales #158 in the cover art of their second album, A Saucerful of Secrets. Scott Derrickson, who directed

the upcoming big screen Doctor Strange adaptation starring Benedict

Cumberbatch, is furthering the connection. In a Reddit AMA, Derrickson (who is prone

to tweeting out Floyd lyrics) said he’s using a Syd-era song in the film. 

What one? We’ll have to wait to see. There’s more, though, as Michael

Giacchino‘s score for the film definitely evokes some Floydian

spacerock (and baroque Morricone-isms too). You can check out the very cool end

credits theme “Master of the Mystic” below.

More: Benedict Cumberbatch came out to sing “Comfortably Numb” with David

Gilmour at London’s Royal Albert Hall on September 28. You can watch video of that

below.Subscribe to Brooklyn Vegan on 

________________________________________________________________________________________

(10/23/2016)*Every Song On Pink Floyd's Dark Side Of

The Moon, Ranked From Worst To Best- Org posted 10/22

If ever an album was designed to be heard as one continuous musical whole, then Pink Floyd’s magnum opus The Dark Side of the

Moon is surely it. The concept is deliberately constructed to flow from start to finish through the linking techniques of painstakingly constructed sound effects,

disconnected voices and musical interludes. And it feels like the main purpose of this

1973 release is to create its own homogenous, interconnected universe first

between your ears, then in your brain. But if we want to pass judgment on what is the

finest and what is the feeblest on this 45 million-selling monster – and we do – then we’re just going to have to grit our teeth, risk incurring the wrath of Messrs Waters and Gilmour, and simply get on with it…

10. Speak To MeStarting with a heartbeat is a pretty good

way to get a listener onside, and the strange voices and weirdy keyboard sounds piques the curiosity nicely. But, of course, this is only a preamble ahead of the main

event…

9. Any Colour You LikeThe sound of the keyboards on this

instrumental can’t help but make it a period piece. But whereas ’80 music sounds horribly dated, ‘70s music often feels

perfectly dated, a gorgeous time capsule of an era when music was unselfconsciously

experimental, yet packed with melody.

Unless you happened to be ELP, of course. Probably a little bit self-indulgent, this one.

But even so…

8. EclipseSegueing in from previous track Brain

Damage to close out the album, Eclipse does feel like a coda, a musical and vocal summing up of everything we’ve heard on the album. There’s something valedictory

going on here, almost as if the band wanted to let us know they knew they were onto something big here. They really weren’t

wrong.

7. On The RunIn complete contrast to preceding track,

Breathe, this is Floyd getting sonically way out there. An instrumental that builds on a sequenced synth pattern, it’s allegedly a

musical interpretation of keyboardist Richard Wright’s acknowledged fear of

flying. It certainly has to ability to give you the sweats, and is probably best left alone if

you’re in an advanced state of paranoia.

6. Brain DamageAt least in part inspired by former member Syd Barrett’s mental health issues, Floyd reach back to their former cohort’s vocal

stylings for this song’s effect. The line “The lunatic is in my head” and the

accompanying cackling is somewhat unnerving. But again, the band look to add

at least some sonic comfort via Wright’s lush organ swells. Another song that

demands multiple listens.

5. The Great Gig In The SkyA sensitive contemplation of death that

ends up in a place you’d never expect given the pretty keyboards that Richard Wright

brings to the tune’s first minute. However, when Clare Torry suddenly decides to make

her own voice sound like an instrument and unleashes those famous sounds from

somewhere uncharted and deep within her soul, well, we’re now listening to something

entirely different. Death can perhaps be seen as both comforting and unnerving.

This track captures both emotions perfectly.

4. Us And ThemClearly a song often heard by Radiohead, it

does that deceptive thing of starting off sounding like nothing much at all. But as it starts to take shape, it suddenly starts to

show off its vast range of colours. Sax solos, lovely lingering piano fills, big choruses,

crazy little talking additions. It actually feels quite seductive, which isn’t a word you’d

normally associate with Floyd.

3. MoneyA song so globe-straddlingly famous now that it’s almost impossible to critique with

anything approaching objectivity. But we’ll give it a go. Roger Waters’ walking bass

takes the Floyd as close to funky as these distinctly white boys were ever likely to get.

Wright’s electric piano stabs have a faint whiff of Booker T about them, and the sax

solo is decidedly get-down groovy. Yet Floyd take traditional patterns and weave something new out of them. The band fall back towards familiar territory once Dave Gilmour starts to wig out and then we’re

suddenly back where we started, lick-wise. Of course it’s a classic

2. Breathe (In The Air)A beautiful, seductive and languid intro

lures the listener into an almost dreamlike state. It seems to almost – if not beg us, then at least cajole us – to take the time

truly to live life. On an album that wears its technological modernity on its sleeve, this is a weirdly straightforward tune to cough

up as early as track two. But it’s loveliness defeats any doubts.

1. TimeFamously starting with all kinds if chiming timepieces, Waters explained that the lyric was prompted by a sudden realisation in his late 20s that he was now in the thick of life rather than preparing for it. It takes over two minutes of nonetheless worthwhile, drum-oriented intro for the recognisable

vocal melody to kick in. But it’s well worth the wait. A perfect example of how Floyd

can bring two entirely different moods to a song and somehow make it work. Lovely

guitar solo from Gilmour too________________________________________________________________________________________

_____(11/19/2016)*

How Roger Waters rebuilt The Wall

$15 million, 424 bricks, 56 dates: How Roger Waters took Pink Floyd's The Wall and turned it into the greatest show on

Earth

This feature originally appeared in Classic Rock 158. Is there anybody out there?

Yes. Hundreds of people, actually, milling around outside the Atlantico Pavilion in

Lisbon. They’re here for the second European date of the biggest and most

expensively staged tour of the year: Roger Waters’ revival of The Wall, more than three decades after its original staging.

Tonight’s show is a sell-out, like most of the 50-plus dates on this leg. By the time tour finishes, around a million people will have watched an 11-metre high, 70-metre wide

wall being built between them and the man they’ve come to see. The band on stage will

continue to play a 32-year old album behind that wall until the end of the show, when

the whole edifice will come tumbling down. A similar number of people have a already

seen the show in North America last autumn. Now, as then, no one is likely to complain about not being able to see the

band during the show.

The Wall is a legend in the annals of live rock music, partly because it was such a alien concept and partly because Pink

Floyd, the band led by Waters at that time, performed the show just 29 times, in four

cities – LA, New York, London and Dusseldorf – in 1980 and 1981. It would be the last time Waters and Pink Floyd played

together until they reunited for Live 8 in 2005.

Pink Floyd never showed any interest in performing The Wall after Waters departed and guitarist David Gilmour took the helm.

Waters embarked on a solo career, although he was tempted into staging a

grandiose Wall in 1990 in Berlin with an all-star cast to celebrate the fall of another

even more famous wall.

His career stalled soon afterwards, although it was revived at the turn of the millennium

with the In The Flesh world tour and has prospered since. But there was no indication that he was planning to

revisit The Wall. As he says: “It was incredibly difficult to stage back in 1980

and we lost a lot of money doing it.”

Then in April last year Waters announced that he was taking The Wall on a world tour.

“Well, I did a tour a couple of years back where I did the whole of Dark Side Of The

Moon,” he explains now. “I had been reluctant to take that piece and re-do it. But

it worked well. So when I’d recovered from that I thought maybe I had one more in me. My fiancé said that maybe I should do The

Wall. I said I couldn’t. But it wouldn’t go away…”

Mark Fisher is mildly exasperated. As the stage designer for both the original The

Wall tour and this 21st-century update, he’s heard all the talk of this new show being the sort of thing they could only dream

about 30 years ago.

“It’s the same bloody wall,” he says with a sigh. “Identical. It’s frustrating that people think we’re doing something that we could

not have done in 1980. 

The engineering behind the building of the wall – the platforms that the men go up and

down on to build the wall, the stabilising masts that go up inside the wall to stop it

falling over, and the cardboard bricks themselves – are exactly what I designed

back in 1980. The only things that are different are connected with how they are controlled. [In 1980] I sat behind the stage with a bank of switches and moved things

up and down. Now we have a computer that does the same thing and a man that

watches the computer.”

As a young architecture student, the original The Wall production was Fisher’s first major design for a rock show. It was

the springboard for a career as a self-styled ‘event architect’ that has seen him become

the in-house stage designer on globetrotting stadium tours by The Rolling Stones and U2, as well as the opening and closing ceremonies at the Beijing Olympics.

So when Waters started thinking of bringing back The Wall, Fisher was his first call. “He told me that it would be much easier to do

now than then,” says Waters. “Technology had come a long way, and people spend a lot more money on tickets than they used

to. He thought I could make the figures work, and maybe even come out of it with some gravy. So I thought, okay, let’s do it.”

Inside the empty arena the actual wall is still an imposing site – even part-built and unlit – jutting out from the upper tiers of

each side and tapering down to the stage. It’s not just the height, it’s also the width:

three-quarters the length of a football pitch. Behind and beneath the wall is a scaffolding

warren jammed with motors, hydraulic pumps, lifts, platforms and passageways.

Each piece has a diagram stuck on to show exactly where it fits. And then there are the piles of ‘bricks’ that arrived flat-packed and are assembled and waiting to be laid. (They tried making them out of plastic, but plastic

cracks. So it was back to cardboard and white paint.)

The projectors have been focused, the band have sound-checked. Now there’s just an

echoing, quiet calm. Everything that needed to be checked has been checked. At what used to be known as the sound desk and is now the production control centre, a couple of guys are tapping on keyboards while rows of screens flicker on standby…

The calm is broken when the venue’s doors open and groups of people run to the front

of the stage and take up prime position. Unlike the American shows, the European shows are freestanding on the arena floor wherever possible. This means there’s no room for the dishevelled tramp who would

wander up and down the aisles at American concerts, pushing a supermarket trolley and

brandishing a placard saying ‘No thought control’, before being ushered out by a burly security guy just before the show

began.

In the centre of the floor a skeleton staff are minding the control centre. 

Banks of screens flicker on standby, waiting to be activated. The stage is similarly quiet;

there are no roadies making last-minute equipment checks or tapping microphones. Everything that needed to be checked was done earlier. The only untoward item is a

tailor’s dummy placed centre stage. The PA is playing a succession of Bob Dylan songs. This is the calm before the choreographed

multi-media barrage is unleashed.

The Wall famously started with a gob. During the last show of Pink

Floyd’s Animals tour at Montreal’s Olympic Stadium, Waters spat at a fan who was

yelling drunkenly for the band to play Careful With That Axe Eugene.

Afterwards Waters was so appalled by his behaviour that he sketched out the idea of

a show with the band playing behind a wall to express his own feeling of alienation

from the audience. He reminded the audience of the incident when the Walltour reached Montreal’s Bell Centre last October.

“When I wrote it, it was mainly about me, a little bit about Syd Barrett, but by and large

it’s about fear,” he says. “It’s about a frightened person. Fear makes you

defensive, and when you’re defensive you start building defences and that could be

seen as a wall.”

It has always been assumed that the original production of The Wall, which

included a crashing Stuka dive bomber and giant inflatable puppets to reinforce

Waters’s bleak tale of alienation, paranoia, power and war was too complex to be

toured. This is another thing that irks Mark Fisher.

“The only thing that stopped it being toured in 1980 was the cost,” he says. “And it

wasn’t that the show was that expensive, it was that tickets were cheap. The top price ticket at Earls Court was £8. At the O2 in May people are paying £65 to £85. That completely changes the economics of

putting a touring show together.”

Fisher maintains that the ticket price reflects what the show is worth. “It allows you to spend a lot more on the hardware

and the crew. We’ve spent the best part of $15 million [£9.4 million] putting this show on the road. Back in 1980 we spent about

$2 million at most.”

Tour director Andrew Zweck is another veteran of the original Wallshows. He confirms that this is the biggest show

Waters has put together. “There are 24 trucks parked outside,” he says backstage,

with the air of someone who has spent

decades keeping a close eye on the bigger picture. “There are 116 people on the road, which is more than double what we’ve had

before. And that includes 14 carpenters who are just brick builders. The economics of it mean that we can now move the show overnight. The crew will be out of here by

about three in the morning, and they’ll start work again around six or seven.”

While the wall itself has barely changed, other elements of the show have been

greatly enhanced. The biggest advance has come with the projection. In 1980, three

35mm projectors struggled to beam Gerald Scarfe’s inimitable animations onto the wall in focus and without too much overlap. Now there are 15 HD-quality projectors pointed

at the wall, with a bit-mapping grid that means that as soon as a brick is positioned on the wall it immediately becomes part of the projection. It’s a far cry from some of

the early-80s shows that Mark Fisher remembers as “a mad race between the

drug-crazed road crew and the band to see who could get to the intermission first”.

As Video Content Director, Sean Evans is in charge of projections. A youthful-looking, heavily tattooed American, he grew up

listening to The Wall (“I know it inside-out”). Evans, Waters and editor Andy Jennison

spent weeks working on ideas for the projections in an editing room.

“It was like being back at art college,” says Evans. “Right from the start Roger said: ‘I don’t want to do this as it was. I have no interest in not making this political. We

have to modernise it and we have to bring a message.’”

Waters says the new show has developed from the story of one frightened man hiding behind the wall, to a more expansive look

at the way nations and ideologies are

divided from each other. “We are controlled by the powers that be who tell us we need to guard against the evil ones who are over

there and different from us and who we must be frightened of,” he explains.

Part of the message included broadening the original album’s references to

encompass other wars and acts of violence since then.

“Roger put a notice on his website asking for people to send in pictures and details of family members, civilian or military, killed in

wars or terrorist acts,” says Evans. “We worked on it for months, and the first time I saw it with an audience even I welled up.

During the intermission we put them all up on the wall. One night I saw a guy who’d obviously just seen a friend or relative on the wall, and he was just standing there

sobbing.”

The wider message of The Wall is clear from the outset when, instead of a ‘surrogate’

Pink Floyd taking the stage and fooling the audience (the opening gambit of the original show), the PA booms out the

dialogue from Stanley Kubrick’s Spartacus where the Romans try

to coerce the slaves into revealing the rebel leader, only to be met by a growing chorus

of “I am Spartacus”.

That’s the cue for the heavy opening chords of In The Flesh? as Waters walks on and

dons the long leather coat that has materialised on the tailor’s dummy. The

song culminates in a bombast of old technology – lights, smoke, fireworks, and

the dive-bombing plane crashing in flames – that softens you up for the barrage of

images to come.

Gerald Scarfe’s remade inflatable puppets make their mark. The sylph-like wife now

has a ghastly green allure (and a startling pudenda for those who are startled by that kind of thing), while the mother now cuts

more of a beady, surveillance character as she scans the audience, which is reinforced

by an equally inquisitive CCTV on the circular screen. Only the teacher has failed to move with the times. He may have a new

jacket but he’s decidedly old-fashioned – it’s been a long time since canes were

routinely swished in the classroom.

Getting Scarfe’s original animations to hold up against the new animations was another time-consuming task for Sean Evans and his

team. “His stuff is legendary, you can’t mess with it. Fortunately Roger had the

original film, so we were able to restore it from the best possible source, but it still took a lot of work to make it look good against the other stuff we were doing.

Some of it, like the flower sequence, was actually made for the circular screen, so we

extended the stems across the wall so it

looked as if the flowers were coming from somewhere.”

Some of Scarfe’s other animations, such as the marching hammers, have been re-

animated to fill the entire wall with a vivid brightness that borders on intimidating.

Others, including the stems of the flowers, have been rendered in 3D. The projectors

also make the whole edifice sway and buckle alarmingly. There are moments

when you wonder if the animated trickery will upstage the climax of the show, when

the wall comes crashing down.

“We’ve paced the effects so it all builds up to that point,” says Evans. “We thought

about whether to add any effects to the wall as it falls. But actually it looks pretty

spectacular from wherever you are in the arena, with all the smoke billowing out and

stuff. But if you’re in the first five rows it feels like it’s gonna hit you. I’ve been in the

pit a couple of times with a camera and gotten brained a couple of times. Those

things are heavier than they look.”Which is why, in these days of ludicrous

litigation over the mildest inconvenience, a Health & Safety officer has been added to

the tour payroll.

But what about the music?  Waters’s current band includes guitarists Snowy White, Dave Kilminster and GE Smith,

drummer Graham Broad, keyboard player John Carin and, on piano and Hammond

organ, Waters’s son Harry.

Snowy White first played with Pink Floyd on their Animals tour in 1977, and he was part

of the ‘surrogate’ band for the 1980 Wallshows. He has been a member of Waters’s band since 1999. And he’s happy

to shed the non-committal omerta that hangs over most professional session

musicians.

“This show is choreographed down to the second, because it wouldn’t work

otherwise,” he explains. “The original was pretty tied down, too. People ask me if it’s

boring playing exactly the same thing every night. And I thought it would be, but really it’s not. There’s a lotto think about while

you’re on stage, and you’re trying to get it that little bit sweeter every night.”

It was White who found Dave Kilminster, who takes on the ‘poisoned chalice’ of

replicating David Gilmour’s epic guitar solo on Comfortably Numb. “Roger wants it just the way it is on record, and that’s a young man’s job,” White says. “I’m happy to let

Dave get up on top of the wall.”

A large proportion of the Lisbon audience is surprisingly young (“They’ve been

introduced to The Wall by their parents, who may in turn have been introduced to it

by their parents,” says White). It’s something that makes the team behind it proud, although ultimately job satisfaction is almost as important as the cheque. Mark Fisher took particular pleasure in watching the US leg of The Wall running neck-and-neck with Lady Gaga in terms of revenue. “Roger is unambiguously about alienation,

discrimination, anti-war. The audiences have been picking up on that. You’d be

hard put to know what the fuck Lady Gaga is about.”

In fact Waters’s tour would eventually outstrip Gaga’s in terms of the money it made. “We were second only to Bon Jovi, who were playing stadiums,” says Andrew

Zwick. “We were offered stadiums but Roger turned them down, even though it

meant we needed to play another 16 dates in America to meet the business plan. That

was fine by me, too.”

Another recurring theme among the technical and creative crews is Waters’s

continual attention to detail. Changes are still being made at the start of the

European tour. Costumes have been altered, and the furniture in the hotel room that appears out of the wall in the second

half of the show has been changed.

“That’s Roger’s trademark,” says Zweck. “He’s never satisfied. He wants to be

involved in everything, every note, every image, the choreography. His fingerprints

are all over The Wall.”

They were all over the original show, and the album, for that matter. It’s not as if

Waters needed to reclaim The Wall, but the recognition after so long in the shadow of the band he quit must be gratifying. Mark Fisher can still remember the ignominy of Waters’s Radio KAOStour playing to less

than 500 people at Wembley Arena in 1987,

and the following year Pink Floyd packed out the stadium next door.

While the original The Wall album will always be associated with Pink Floyd, it’s Waters who is clearly identified with the extraordinary success of the Wall tour. Significantly, he reasserts his authority

over Comfortably Numb and Run Like Hell, the two songs with which Pink Floyd

climaxed their sets in the 80s and 90s. Indeed David Gilmour’s appearance on top of the wall during Comfortably Numb was

for many the high point of the original Wall production. But Waters sings

the lyrics with real passion and despair and, as the guitar solo comes in, smashes his hand against the wall, which shatters, sending a collective gasp through the

audience. It’s yet another gobsmacking moment.

And Waters turns the largely instrumental Run Like Hell into a dictator’s rally with waving flags, strutting feet and

crossed-fist salutes. By the end of the song it’s difficult to believe that Waters didn’t

orchestrate the Libyan uprising as a publicity stunt for the tour.

Almost as startling is Waters’s crowd-friendly demeanour, smiling, even making

eye contact with fans down the front whenever he removes the long leather coat that he wears for his dictator’s role in the

show. It’s a far cry from the remote, uncommunicative figure he cut for so long,

not least in the original Wall shows.

“I’m completely different, and feel completely different about being on stage

now than I did then,” he admits. “In the last 30 years I’ve come round to embracing the

possibilities of that connection with the audience. Now I milk it mercilessly, just

because it’s fun and it feels good. Whereas back then I was so fearful that when I was

on stage I was the same as I was at a party – standing in a corner, not looking at

anybody, smoking cigarettes and more or less saying: ‘Don’t come anywhere near me.’ Thank goodness I’ve grown up a bit

since then. I like being on stage and enjoy the feeling of warmth – what’s not to like?"

FROM THE ARCHIVE

___________________________________________________________________________________

(11/09/2016)*

Pink Floyd, ‘The Early Years 1965-1972′: Album Review

It’s easy to forget that Pink Floyd were around long before The Dark Side of the

Moon made them one of the biggest bands

in the world. That 1973 album and classic No. 1 LPs like Wish You Were Here and The

Wall that followed often shadow the fact that before Dark Side, the band recorded seven albums, none of which managed to

crack the Top 40.

The massive box set The Early Years — 1965-1972 is a sturdy reminder that Pink Floyd had a long history before The Dark Side of the Moon logged more than 900

weeks on the chart. Over the course of 27 CDs, Blu-rays and DVDs, the group’s history

— starting with demos recorded by the group the year it formed and ending with a remixed version of the album that came out right before the one that finally broke them

— unfolds piece by piece, as members come and go (singer and guitarist David

Gilmour replaced the band’s original visionary, Syd Barrett, not long after its

debut album was released) and the group wipes away the psychedelic shadings of its

early work and expands into more experimental territory.

The Early Years divides the story into six volumes (plus a bonus seventh one that

collects some stray tracks and videos somehow left off the other discs), most devoted to individual years that neatly divide into album eras. And with each

successive record, Pink Floyd inched closer to the thick, progressive sound that

anchors Dark Side. The musical space between 1967’s debut album, The Piper at

the Gates of Dawn, and 1972’s Obscured by Clouds, the LP released nine months

before Dark Side, is immense. But The Early Years  — which documents it all step by

step with previously unreleased songs, live cuts, concert footage, TV and radio

appearances and more — makes it all seem like the most logical of progressions.

How did Pink Floyd get from their odd debut single, “Arnold Layne,” about a clothes-

stealing transvestite, to the epic “Echoes,” one of their most celebrated pre-Dark

Side tracks? Songs like the 25-minute live version of “Atom Heart Mother” with brass, choir and strings from a 1970 BBC session and the various soundtrack work collected

here connect the dots.

Because none of the seven albums from the period are represented here, at least not

with versions of songs you’ve heard before, The Early Years tends to get a bit repetitive at times (hope you like “Set the Controls for the Heart of the Sun”; that A

Saucerful of Secrets track is here a lot). To their credit, though, Pink Floyd were

constantly evolving their material onstage. For example, a live version of “Interstellar

Overdrive” with Frank Zappa barely contains the familiar riff that drives the

song.

And those moments, along with the handful of previously unreleased songs from

Barrett’s short tenure with the group, are the set’s most intriguing ones. Videos

documenting various promotional appearances through the years — where the band was forced to lip- synch songs,

with Gilmour often filling in for the departed Barrett — also help to form a more vivid

picture of the first couple years, when they were often faced with condescending and

occasionally rude TV hosts.

The Early Years isn’t designed for casual fans, the ones Roger Waters later railed against on albums like The Wall. It’s a

deeply committed collection with more than 125 tracks and 15 hours of video that aim to be the definitive word, outside of the

albums, on the band’s first chapter. There were bigger, and grander, things to come. But without these songs, they never would

have gotten to the masterpieces that made them one of rock music’s biggest bands.

_________________________________________________________________________________

(11/09/2016)*Guest DJ: The Politics and Passions of Roger

Waters

Back in the summer of 2015, Roger Waters did something that at the time I found surprising: He played the Newport Folk Festival. I couldn't imagine a man

who's music felt more distant to folk music than his and the music he did with Pink

Floyd. When he got on stage and played John Prine's "Hello In There," a song

about aging and why we fight and die in war, it all became clear: These were two

men covering the same ground.

So we asked Roger Waters to play DJ, to play music by those he love and talk about

what draws him to song. This conversation isn't about his time with Pink Floyd. In fact,

over the course of this nearly hour-long interview, he didn't mention the band he left more than 30 years ago even once.

We do talk with him about his upcoming own solo work, including his upcoming

tourcalled "Us And Them." But at the heart of everything, this creative force behind some of the 20th century's most iconic

music is politics, money, greed and ultimately hope.

Mention the music of Billie Holiday (who was addicted to heroin) and Waters

launches into an assault on what he calls draconian drug laws that vilify addicts

instead of treating them. That leads to a discussion of corruption and greed in

politics and more knotty issues than we could reasonably keep track of: The U.S. presidential race, the conflict between

Israel and Palestine, the state of the music industry, the futility of war, Guantanamo,

civil rights and the Black Lives Matter movement, prison reform and how Waters, remarkably, remains hopeful and optimistic in the face of all the despair and suffering

he sees plaguing the world.

It's an expansive, sometimes thrilling, sometimes exhausting conversation you

can hear with the link above, or read edited highlights and listen to the songs Waters

chose below. —Bob Boilen

On how the value of music has been diminished by corporate interests and

streaming services:

"Music no longer has any value. It is only around in our lives because it's used to sell

soap powder and Volkswagens. It's the advertisers who are actually driving the

ship. Music is just a means to the end for them, so that they don't have the passion

for Billie Holiday or Sam Cooke or any of the other people that I might choose and who I really care about listening to. Those people under these new rules would never get paid because the idea of all of this: It's all there for everybody to stream all the time. It's based upon the notion that it is valueless and that the people who make the music should not get paid. And they say they do pay them. Yeah, they pay them like point naught naught naught naught naught of one cent for a stream or something. The

change that actually goes into the pocket of the artist is miniscule. There's no way that

young artists particularly can make a living, which I think is disgusting."

On John Prine's song "Hello In There" and the role of inspiration in the creative

process:

"I don't choose what I paint. It's very, very difficult to write a song or to paint a picture.

And I think people who do it, whose work we admire, like John Prine — he doesn't one day sit down and think, 'I know, I'm going to

write a song about old people and what it must be like to be ignored in old age and

the connections between people.' He wrote that song after he spent a summer

delivering laundry to old people's homes and he would sit and talk to some of the old

folk before. And so it's an expression of some love that he felt in his life and maybe all great work stems from love and from the

ability to love."

On the destructive and senseless nature of war, why he named his upcoming tour 'Us And Them' and the need for humanity to

come together:

"There's a line in my song 'Us And Them' which goes, 'With, without / and who'll deny

that's what the fighting's all about?' That's why my new tour next year is going to be

called 'Us And Them.' It's specifically about that line because the answer to the

question, 'Who'll deny that's what the fighting is all about?' is this: Almost

everyone. Almost everyone will deny that 'with/without' is what the fighting is all about. My contention is that it is. Most

people think the fighting is about the fact that we are right and they are wrong. Most people think that war is about ideology. It's about, 'If only they could learn to live the

way we do and be democratic. If only they could change. If only they could become

better. Everything would be all.' That's not what it's about. It's quite clear to anyone with half a brain that there is no us and them. We are all us. We're all human

beings. Our nationalities should be very — should not even be in the first five items of importance in our lives. Nationality is — is a track that we march down unthinkingly and

it leads us nowhere."

On the need for young people to disconnect from the digital age and reconnect with

each other:

I think there is a hunger now for a path to open up or a space to open up in front of

people that's not full of iPhones, but where they can actually be allowed the

information to see what the potential for their lives is, and to see that maybe there is

space for love rather than commerce in their lives — maybe there's a possibility

that we could organize our society so that we helped each other and not just each

other in this country, not just to educate our children so we at least get an educated electorate, but to help people in other

countries in the world to recognize that this is a very small fragile planet and we will

destroy it if we don't start cooperating with one another. And in order for that

cooperation to work, the very rich advanced

developed countries are going to have to help the less developed countries.

Otherwise we are going to remain in a state of conflict until everyone is dead and it will

not take very long."________________________________________________________________________________________

_______________(11/04/2016)*

Listen to Unreleased Pink Floyd Song “Vegetable Man” Written By Syd Barrett

Recorded in 1967A rare, unreleased Pink Floyd song called “Vegetable Man,” sung by Syd Barrett,

premiered on BBC 6 Music this morning. It was written by Barrett in 1965 before being recorded in 1967. While bootlegged by fans in the past, “Vegetable Man” is getting its first official release through an enormous

27xCD box set, The Early Years 1965–1972, out November 11. Listen to it here by

skipping ahead to 51:15.

(11/04/2016)*Roger Waters Details Pink Floyd’s ‘Toxic

Environment’Org-November 3, 2016 

Appearing on Marc Maron’s WTF Podcast, Roger Waters didn’t hold back when asked how solo life was treating him. He loves it

mainly because of how poorly he claims his former Pink Floyd bandmates David Gilmour and Rick Wright made him feel toward the

end of their time together.

Related: Roger Waters Announces Us + Them North American Tour Dates

Waters admitted that he felt inept even on Pink Floyd’s biggest records, and it took

getting away for him to learn more about his unique talentand capacity to create. “I

think it was really important that I got away when I did,” he said. He went on to

elucidate how his bandmates’ criticism hampered his own sense of possibility.

“Well, I was in a very toxic environment, where I was around some people…well, David and Rick mainly, who were always

trying to drag me down. They were always trying to knock me off whatever that perch

was.”

When asked how they would try to knock him down, Waters answered, “By claiming

that I was tone deaf and that I didn’t understand music.” He imitated some of

the feedback he would hear, “‘Oh, he’s just a boring kind of teacher figure who tells us

what to do, but he can’t tune his own guitar.'”

Waters added, “They were very snotty and snippy because they felt very insignificant, I

think.” But he clarified that it wasn’t all bad. “I’m not putting them down,” he said.

“Those years that we were together,

whatever it was like socially, there is no question that we did some really good work

together(11/04/1016)*

Why Doctor Strange shares its psychedelic DNA with Pink Floyd

Marvel’s latest blockbuster has a curious number of musical connections that go way

back to the comic’s 60s origins

“Open your eye!,” Tilda Swinton’s version of the Ancient One intones as she presses against Dr Stephen Strange’s forehead,

activating his pineal gland and sending him on a trip beyond the infinite that, even in these CG-saturated times, could only be described as “far out”. It is one of many extended psychedelic sequences that

makes Doctor Strange one of the headier films to play in wide release.

The common complaint about Marvel Studios’ films is that, for all their high-tech armor and speed-of-sound slugfests, they tend to be tempered in the visual department. The plot and exposition scenes in Scott Derrickson’s Doctor Strange don’t do much to break that mold, but when

the story necessitates special effects to step in, the spacey spirits of comics

visionaries like Jack Kirby finally get their day at the multiplex.

Doctor Strange was always an outlier in funnybooks. While it had the typical goofy Stan Lee patter (“By the Mystic Moons of Munnopor!” “By the Wondrous Winds of Watoomb!” and “By the Hoary Hosts of

Hoggoth!”, to offer a sample set), its eastern setting and emphasis on mystical

powers were, for 1963, just right for burgeoning hippies who wan

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---------- Forwarded message ----------

From: Michael <floydman64@yahoo.com>To: floydman64@gmail.comCc: Bcc: Date: Fri, 5 May 2017 15:24:50 -0700Subject: 2016 newsArchived News from 2016  (12/29/2016)Roger Waters: Another Brick In The Wall - The Opera; dates addedAnother Brick In The Wall - The Opera receives its world premiere at theSalle Wilfrid-Pelletier at Place des Arts, in Montréal, Quebec, Canada onMarch 11th 2017, with subsequent performances taking place through themonth.Due to the popularity of the show, some additional performances have nowbeen announced, and tickets can be purchased through Ticketmaster.com. Formore information on Another Brick In The Wall - The Opera and other events,visit OperaDeMontreal.com.

The press conference for the series of performances was held at the OlympicStadium, the scene of the infamous spitting incident which inspired TheWall. "It was unpleasant," said Waters. "I accept that. I was unpleasant.The audience was unpleasant. But it clearly had an effect on me and thestory I tell is that it had some impact on me creating this piece oftheatre, which is extremely valuable to me."I was pissed off or disaffected because of a large number of people who,with all due respect to the population of Montreal, were drunk and notreally paying much attention to what was going on on stage and some kid wasscrambling up the front [of the stage] and I think that I spat at him. Irealised I was at the wrong place at the wrong time doing the wrong thing.And I needed to express that I didn’t feel human and we all want to feelhuman. My response to that was to write a show that involved building ahuge wall between me and the people that I was trying to communicate with.“At the end of the day, The Wall is about a journey from spitting insomeone’s face towards a position where love becomes more important and ourresponsibility to those that share this planet with us becomes moreimportant than our desire to engage in things that make us richer.”

At the press conference, Waters noted that “What I’ve heard so far isextremely impressive. Normally when people take rock music and producesymphonic versions of it, they stick slavishly to the melodies, and it’sawful. Julien Bilodeau has nodded gracefully at the work that I didmusically all those years ago, but he has transported it into a completely

different oeuvre. It’s developing a life of its own, which is in aclassical tradition, but the libretto is mine. The words are mine. So thethoughts and ideas expressed in the text belong to me.”

As we note above, tickets for the performances, which take place on March11th, 13th, 14th, 16th, 18th, 20th, 22nd, 24th and 26th, 2017, can bepurchased through Ticketmaster.com or directly from the venue (SalleWilfrid-Pelletier).(12/29/2016)*Pink Floyd needed conflictNick Mason insists Pink Floyd were no more difficult that other bands butthinks their differences only helped their musicNick Mason thinks Pink Floyd wouldn't have done "good work" without their"conflicts".

The 'Comfortably Numb' hitmaker doesn't feel that the band's ex-bass playerand founder Roger Waters' ego was to blame for their disagreements and thatit was simply a case of having different "musical preferences".However, he insists the infamous tension between the band members wasn'tnecessarily a bad thing as it helped with their music.

Asked if he thinks egos had anything to do with their spats, the72-year-old drummer exclusively told BANG Showbiz: "I don't think it'sthat. I think it was to do with musical preferences."He did want to do things his own way, so maybe that was the best thing todo was to do his own way."I think we have our reputations, but most of the bands you see aren't muchbetter than we are."The other important thing is that if we didn't have the conflicts we hadthen we wouldn't have done the good work we did do."Meanwhile, Nick previously said he doesn't think he will r----- Message truncated -----